As of November 2011, four Circuit Courts have issued opinions on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Each case has essentially focused on two issues: whether the Act’s Section 1501, the Requirement to Maintain Minimum Essential Coverage, violates the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution: and whether the penalty assessed against taxpayers who do not maintain the minimum level of coverage is a “tax” and therefore authorized under Congress’ taxing power. These opinions are interesting but largely miss the mark in their analysis of whether the PPACA violates the Constitution…

In the wake of the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care Education and Reconciliation Act, several commentators and political observers have suggested that employers will be financially overburdened to the point where they will need to eliminate their employee healthcare plans, thus depriving employees of health coverage and driving up the cost to taxpayers of funding the federally operated insurance exchanges. Several recent events have fueled this speculation: